Brew Views: Bubba Ho-Tep

Hail to the King, baby.

It’d be weird enough if Don Coscarelli
simply made a film about an elderly Elvis (Bruce Campbell) and JFK
(Ossie Davis, who is decidedly black and not Irish) battling a
resurrected Egyptian mummy from their nursing home. But the dude behind Phantasm and The Beastmaster ups the bizarro factor on 2002’s Bubba Ho-Tep by
turning the oddball story into a genuinely affecting meditation on
aging. Campbell, embracing his destiny of playing the King, makes Elvis a
fat, horny and devastated shell of a man who groans his way into
action. It’s the saddest, most moving film about a geriatric rock star
and president squaring off against the undead ever made.